


Ghosting

by grayimperia



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 15:20:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20584667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayimperia/pseuds/grayimperia
Summary: “Will you kill him—your brother?”“If I see him,” Mercedes said. “And he won’t hesitate to kill me. He’s a good soldier.”Their march approached a forest and Linhardt’s beloved white clouds were obscured by the thick canopy. “I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of good soldiers.”-Linhardt's always hated ghosts.





	Ghosting

**Author's Note:**

> Blue Lions Route. Spoilers for Mercedes's backstory.

It’s languid like everything Linhardt does. He hears over and over from Mercedes telling soldiers’ families that everyone processes grief differently and all expressions are equal. He hears it so much in the medical tents he frequents—circled around Enbarr like a noose, his mind cavalierly supplies once in his travels—that it imbeds itself in his head not as a fact but a cliché. 

Linhardt isn’t in a medical tent or on a battlefield when he comes to his life altering realization with a quiet, “Huh.” 

Being the lord of Hevring was never on table for him even when he was a first son, Crest bearing, noble brat with an estate to inherit and too much time on his hands. Annette and Mercedes and everyone else from Faerghus who cared to lend him sympathy would bring up the school of sorcery in conversation, nudging his shoulders and just happening to mention how it was such a great place for people who liked research and magic and researching magic.

Linhardt had brushed them off with the very little grace he had and went to watch the waters of Garreg Mach’s pond with Caspar. When they were at the academy, Caspar had practically vibrated in place the day before the fishing tournament, announcing finally there was something going on that Linhardt would get excited about. He had slept through the festivities and Caspar showed up at his door, a sopping wet fish the size of his forearm in his hands, to show him what he was missing. 

Linhardt had blinked at it. Bernadetta screamed when she dared to open her door at their knocking only to be greeted by Caspar’s fish’s dead eyes. The meal she turned it into after the fact had been pleasant, though.

That memory had come back to him a year after Edelgard’s war ended. He was a professor at the tentatively reopened Garreg Mach Officer’s Academy, replacing and taking up residence in the deceased Hanneman’s office. The old professor had gifted him stacks upon stacks of paper from his Crest research as a graduation present before he left to offer his services to Edelgard and the Empire. There was a crinkle around the corner of his eyes when he smiled at passing on his torch, and Linhardt wondered if he’d ever get old enough or smile enough to have wrinkles like that. 

There’s a grave for Hanneman in the monastery’s ballooned memorial plot because Manuela insisted upon it. Linhardt knows there’s no body in it. He had seen him fall at Arianrhod to share the fate of all enemy corpses. The papers crowding Linhardt out of house and home are a better monument to the professor than a dingy grave ever could be.

Caspar threw a fit at the mess when they had first moved in, whining about how stuffy and dusty it was until Linhardt opened a window and made a token effort at cleanliness. Sunlight visited the room as soon as he had pushed the dusty shutters aside, and he had fallen asleep in its warmth on the still cluttered desk. Caspar huffed again at his laziness, and when Linhardt woke up in the middle of the night, there was no sun and no Caspar. He didn’t know why he was expecting otherwise. 

Linhardt had been sitting on the floor of his office, organizing and reorganizing Hanneman’s life work into something comprehensible when the answer came to him. His mind had been wandering to this and that as it so often did with rote work and he thought as casually as he did about the proper headings for each section of his paperwork, “I’m never going to get over this.”

Caspar sat cross legged on the ground next to him offering a guilty smile. “Should I leave you alone? That might make things be—”

“Don’t you dare.”

No more was said. Linhardt forgot to show up to his lecture that day, and Caspar didn’t bother to remind him.

-

The death Linhardt sees in his nightmares is Bernadetta’s. The fates of some of the others bodies leaves him ill. Ferdinand was probably dumped into the river for the fish, and Dorothea and Petra were likely trampled in the confusion and mass panic of battle. Today he managed to stave off his chain of thought enough to save himself the nausea of thinking about Edelgard’s remains as otherwise he wouldn’t be able to eat for the rest of the day. 

But Bernadetta burned to death, her body limp and charred on the ground behind the ballista. She manned it even while she was on fire and the smoke made it impossible to see anything more than vaguely enemy shaped silhouettes. 

Linhardt and Mercedes took their routine post-battle walk through Gronder Field after the fact, looking for injured somehow alive among the dead. When they reached the hill, Mercedes placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and said she would survey the smoldering mound alone. 

Linhardt had sat on the ground in a relatively unbloodied spot and pretended he didn’t hear Mercedes’s quiet whispers of distress to herself. He looked for shapes in the clouds above and found fish and Crests and other things he willed his brain into imagining. He had stayed at home after the siege of Garreg Mach kicked off the war. Linhardt wondered if Bernadetta joined the imperial army to avoid such a fate. Edelgard was a taskmaster, but he knew—and Bernadetta had known—she would protect Bernadetta from her father. 

The report was that the imperial army had set the hill ablaze in their retreat. It had been a coordinated effort among the troops. Bernadetta had to have known what fate had in store for her that day. 

Mercedes rubbed circles on his back, but he waved off her comfort as soon as she kneeled beside him. Gronder Field wasn’t the first place he had vomited on their march.

“Oh, Linhardt,” she said. He vaguely realized there was nothing else for her to say but his name. “Linhardt, dear…”

She placed his arm around her shoulders and hauled him back to camp along with the other half dead. In the infirmary tent, all the cots were full, and Mercedes was forced to deposit him on the ground in the corner. “We’re back a little early, Annie,” she had said. “Would you mind watching him? We didn’t quite make it through the whole field.”

Annette nodded and chirped something back in confirmation while Mercedes hurried away to go save someone who wasn’t Bernadetta. Annette paid him little attention, and Linhardt paid her even less as he contributed to the infirmary as a tripping hazard.

Bernadetta wasn’t given a ceremonial grave at Garreg Mach. Caspar nudged Linhardt’s shoulder one day when they passed the greenhouse. “We can fix that, you know.”

She liked carnivorous plants—such scary flowers for a mousy girl. Caspar crossed his arms while Linhardt dug a meager plot next to Hanneman’s grave with his hands. “She was really brave. Maybe not all the time, but in battle she could fight like anyone else. Hell, I bet she could have even beat Claude in an archery contest if she put her mind to it.”

Linhardt snorted. His students raised their eyebrows at his dirty robes for the rest of the day, but his heart felt a little lighter. 

-

Caspar is a terrible writer. When Linhardt was at home, Caspar would write him letters. Each one was meandering and nearly unreadable as Caspar would forget the point of each sentence halfway through it. Linhardt still kept all his letters, and he finally finished clearing out a drawer in his office to keep them in.

They’re worn around the edges, paper soft from age and Linhardt’s hands folding and unfolding them. Most of the oldest ones are dated almost six years ago now, but there are some even before that when they were attending private lessons in their families’ estates. 

Linhardt’s replies were always dull at best, and as the years went on, he began to wonder if Caspar was even receiving his letters anymore. Their exchanges felt less like a conversation and more like each was speaking into the chaos of the new world with the hope that a word or two would get through. 

Once they became soldiers in earnest, there was also the fact that someone else was checking their mail before placing it in their hands. It wasn’t ridiculous to think that with Caspar’s mouth he would blab a state secret or two without thinking, but Linhardt still threw a tantrum at the proud age of twenty-two when he received an already opened letter with entire lines blotted out. 

Caspar laughs when he sees him running his finger over the long since dried ink smears on the last letter he received during the war. “I can’t believe you kept those things.”

“I can’t believe you kept writing.” He sighs. “Mercedes proposed the stupidest idea the other day. She said I should start writing letters to myself.”

“That’s weird,” Caspar says, hoping up to take a seat on Linhardt’s desk. “Would you put them in the mail?”

“No. It’d be more like a diary. ‘Dear Linhardt, everything will be fine today, here’s why.’ Nonsense like that.”

Caspar grins. “She’s funny. I like her.”

“You like everyone.” Linhardt rolls his eyes. “And get down from there—your armor is filthy.”

“Nu-uh, I polished it before I put it on, and,” he glances down at his chest. “Okay maybe it has one or two spots but—”

“Off.”

Caspar huffs but slides down at his command. There’s a soft knock at his door and a call of, “Professor?”

The student’s questions are reasonable and to be expected given Linhardt was half asleep on his feet for most of his lecture. He thinks halfway through one of his explanations that he really is a god-awful teacher and has no business being at the academy. He looks at Caspar over the student’s shoulder who shrugs in response. 

The Kingdom’s off the table and the Empire’s still in shambles and the Alliance doesn’t exist anymore. So Linhardt stays in limbo.

Caspar stays quiet during the meeting, but takes his place back on Linhardt’s desk as soon as his student leaves. He sticks his tongue out at him, and Linhardt decides he’ll clean his office tomorrow. 

-

“If Annette was your enemy,” he asked Mercedes one day on the war march. “Say she changed her mind and joined the Empire, and you met her in battle, what would you do?”

“My,” she said, “what morbid question. I have to say I don’t really like thinking about it.” 

Linhardt nodded. He hated small talk, but he also hated sitting in the damn infirmary cart for hours being jostled with each bump in the road their horses pulled them over. The least he could do was get along with the other person confined to this special torture. 

“But,” Mercedes said. “If such a thing were to happen, I’d probably kill her.”

Mercedes had such a soft voice that every word out of her mouth sounded like a lullaby even when she spoke with conviction. Linhardt stared ahead at the supply cart in front of them. “Huh.”

“I’d try to make it as painless as possible, and I’d probably feel just awful, but war is war,” she leaned back against their uncomfortable wooden bench. “There’s no getting around that.”

Mercedes was gentle, motherly even. Sometimes she scared him more than Dimitri. “You’re a good soldier.”

“Maybe,” she laughed. “Though, if you don’t mind me saying, I think you’re a pretty bad one, Linhardt.”

He thought on it for only a second. “Never claimed to be a good one.”

“You certainly haven’t, but I’ll tell you what,” she said. “If we meet one of your friends again, let me know. I’ll handle it.”

“You’ll kill them?”

“As painlessly as possible.”

Linhardt slumped back in his seat and looked to the sky full of white clouds. “That’s not as comforting as you think it is.”

She hummed and again, “war is war.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “No one would blame you if you left. I promise.”

He snorted. “And go where?”

“I don’t know,” Mercedes said. “Where did Claude fly off to? Almyra, right? I think Almyra might be nice in the winter. Not as cold as up north in Faerghus. I think the professor was proposing amnesty and safe passage for Claude’s remaining supporters to go join him, as well.”

“Start over in a new country by claiming to be a follower of a man I’ve said two words to,” Linhardt said. “Or fight in a war.”

“Not the best choices, I admit.”

He lolled his head over to face her. “You know we’re going to fight your brother.”

Her hands on their horse’s reins tightened just for a second. “I do.”

“Will you kill him?”

“If I see him,” she said. “And he won’t hesitate to kill me. He’s a good soldier.”

Their march approached a forest and Linhardt’s beloved clouds were obscured by the thick canopy. “I don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of good soldiers.”

“Then we shouldn’t talk of my little brother—he’s one of the best.”

“I’m sure he is.”

They sat in silence for a time before Mercedes decided to torment him in the darkest part of the forest. “You know, I heard a wonderful ghost story in the last town we passed through the other day. Apparently if you’re out on a lake on a foggy night, an apparition will—”

Linhardt closed his eyes. “I’m sick of ghosts, too, and I’m asleep now.”

She laughed. Their beaten carriage drew closer to the war’s end. 

“You could try praying if you have a spare moment. Asking for the goddess to end the fighting soon always brings me peace.”

Linhardt’s sick of the goddess, too, but he kept his mouth shut and shut again when Mercedes came to the monastery to pray for her brother’s soul. 

“Do you think,” Caspar whispered to him, “that the goddess would, you know, grant peace to the people who tried to destroy the church?”

Linhardt shook his head. “Let her have her comfort. We all cling to something.” He glanced back at Caspar and sighed. “And clean your armor—you’re in a church. Actually just don’t wear your armor to a church at all. You’ll wake the saints with all your clanging.”

Caspar opened his mouth to argue back, but Mercedes called out, “Linhardt? Would you like to pray, too?”

He didn’t, but he sat beside her and closed his eyes. He had had many naps in these pews as a student. He prayed for sleep and let Mercedes pray for the recovery of Fodlan and all its people and his wayward soul. 

-

King Dimitri is stopping by the monastery to visit the new archbishop. Linhardt scowls and decides he’ll take after Bernadetta and stay locked up in his room. Maybe he’ll crack a joke about her death at dinner to make everyone uncomfortable.

Caspar frowns at him. “Don’t do that. Bernie wouldn’t—”

“It was just a thought.”

He doesn’t want to stay in Faerghus because he kind of hates the king, but then again, he kind of hates Archbishop Byleth, too. They were the ones who gave the order, and hating them stops him from hating himself for following it at least a little.

Linhardt had liked professor Byleth at the academy well enough. Quiet, good at magic, less likely to whack the back of his head than Manuela if he fell asleep in lecture. They were handsome, too, and at least part of Linhardt appreciated that. 

They’re just as beautiful as they were before, but Linhardt sneers at the lightened hair and white robes. They looked better in their black executioner apparel. It hid the blood better.

He joined their class because he figured it was as good as any other back at the academy. Caspar laughed when he told him. “That’s a terrible idea—who’ll keep you awake without me around?”

It turned out Ingrid. She had a worse backhand than Manuela and was a worse nag than Edelgard, but Linhardt barely bothered to switch classes—going back was way too much effort. 

Then the Holy Tomb happened, and Edelgard took all the Black Eagles with her in a sudden dark cloud. 

At the start of her war that ripped nations apart, killed hundreds a day, and ravaged anything resembling the peaceful days they had once known, Linhardt’s first thought had been, “you forgot me.”

Over dinner that night, the former Blue Lions converged to share drinks, stories, and each other’s company. Mercedes looked like she was enjoying herself and whatever conversation she was lost in with Annette so much that Linhardt couldn’t bring himself to rain on her parade. 

Instead, he went to the dock to ask Caspar, “do you ever wonder how the goddess decides who lives and who dies? My research says people with Crests should probably live longer, but a lot of them don’t. Professor Hanneman was studying how to give people Crests without harming them. Maybe I could give you a Crest once I sort through all his papers, though I have been sorting those papers for over a year now, so don’t hold your breath.”

Caspar was wearing brown when Linhardt last saw him. It doesn’t do as good a job hiding the blood and scorch marks as Linhardt would like. 

It’s a foggy night, and the waves seem irritable, the clouds above him an angry black. Linhardt thinks that there will probably be a storm that night as he lays his head down on the dock.

-

Given that Mercedes isn’t soaking wet, Linhardt figures someone else probably pulled him out of the water. 

She shakes him and asks, “What were you thinking?” and again for good measure, “Linhardt, what were you thinking!?”

He’s never seen her angry. He badgered her his entire time in the war with questions no person would want to answer and lectures about Crests when her blood ruined her life. 

“Nothing really,” he manages to slur. There are other people standing in a circle around them. The Blue Lions. His comrades in arms. He looks past them, but Caspar is nowhere to be seen. “Just that story you started telling me…”

Mercedes furrows her brow and turns to whisper something to Annette about taking him to the infirmary. 

“The one,” Linhardt says, “about seeing ghosts out on a lake. I wanted to try it with a pond.”

He’s carried to the infirmary by someone who isn’t Mercedes and sleeps until it’s dark again.

Mercedes is there in the morning, her lips pressed into a thin line when she gives him a fancy looking breakfast he knows she probably made herself. Her voice still manages to be pleasant. “Good morning, Linhardt. You gave us quite a scare the other day.”

He hums. “I didn’t intend to, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ve fallen asleep fishing before—it’s usually fine.”

She ignores his excuses. “I talked to Annie about it, and we’ve decided to stay at Garreg Mach for a little while. Annie loves teaching, and it really is impossible to find a nicer church. The Archbishop liked the idea, too.” 

Linhardt isn’t sure how he’s supposed to respond to that. “Welcome, I guess.”

“So we’ll be around if you need anything,” she says. “You keep your emotions close to your chest, and there’s no need to share everything—I know I didn’t with Emile, not even to Annie for a long time—but you don’t have to rely on ghosts.”

Linhardt looks out the window and away from Mercedes's kind eyes. He hears her sigh. “You know,” she says. “I think Emile and Caspar were good friends during the war. Or at least I’d like to believe they were. Emile was never good at conversation, but he loved to spar and I know Felix told me Caspar was always at the training grounds and challenging him to duels when he thought he was Professor Jeritza.”

Her voice is still a lullaby, but it doesn’t lull him to sleep the way Linhardt wishes it would this time. He’s left giving her the silent treatment, and Linhardt feels more guilt than he would like when Mercedes stands and walks to his beside table. 

“Annie brought you flowers from the greenhouse. She sings this adorable song when she gardens—I think that’s why her flowers always grow to be so pretty. Appreciate them at least a little for her sake, okay?”

She’s reached the door, one hand on the knob when Linhardt says, “I’m a terrible singer. I know how to in theory, but Dorothea always said that didn’t count.”

Mercedes smiles. “Did she now?”

“She preferred singing with the other girls anyway. Edelgard would always complain about us not being in harmony, and then Ferdinand would challenge her to a singing contest, and Seteth would get mad and end service early. I always got an extra hour or two in the library those days.”

She laughs, coming to sit back at his beside. “Once Claude caught Annie singing to herself, and, oh, the poor thing, she was so embarrassed she avoided him for months. She’d even duck behind me when she saw him at the end of the hall.”

Annette is alive and well and Mercedes stories don’t mean quite as much, but Linhardt’s never been a very good storyteller anyway. 

When he makes it out of bed and back to classes, he notices someone has added another unauthorized grave. He forgot to take Mercedes’s flowers back to his room, but it seems she managed to find the time to bring them down to Caspar’s grave herself. 

He kneels down beside them, and Caspar picks up one of the flowers to twirl between his fingers. “Never thought I’d wish I knew more about flowers,” he laughs. “What do you think, Lin? Are these ones good for me?”

He picks one up himself in one fluid motion. “I’m not sure, but we have time to figure it out. I have to do something with the rest of my life after all.”

Caspar pushes against his shoulder. “Don’t sleep it away.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

**Author's Note:**

> The working title for this fic was "Caspar the Friendly Ghost" for far too long, haha. Also I have still yet to play Blue Lions (so sorry for any mistakes!) but I thought the idea of a student being a little resentful they're forced to kill their former friends might be interesting, and, of course, I love Linhardt so I wanted to write a fic about him anyway. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
